This story has been updated to reflect the correction of a transcription error by BC Elections.

A UBC economist says there’s only a 10 per cent chance that absentee ballots and recounts turn a minority legislature into a BC Liberal majority.

Kevin Milligan used past changes between preliminary vote counts and final vote counts to calculate that there is a 62.4 per cent chance that the current result holds, with the BC Liberals winning 43 ridings, the NDP holding 41 and the Greens keeping three seats and the balance of power.

While the NDP only claimed the Courtenay-Comox riding by nine votes, Milligan found that – because absentee ballots tend to favour the NDP – it’s unlikely the riding will flip for the BC Liberals.

Milligan’s original analysis on Thursday suggested it was actually more likely that the riding of Coquitlam-Burke Mountain would flip from the BC Liberals to the NDP. But that was based on preliminary results that turned out to be incorrect. BC Elections said Friday morning that the gap in votes in that riding was actually larger than originally thought.